It will increase voter turnout by enabling more people to vote

The argument

Election day should be a national holiday because doing so will enable more people to vote, thus increasing voter turnout. Among registered voters on the 2016 US presidential election day, being “too busy” or having a conflicted schedule was the third highest reason cited for not voting. This reason accounted for 2.7 million registered voters who did not cast a vote. Election day should be a national holiday so that everyone has the time and opportunity to vote. Election day in the United States always falls on the first Tuesday of November. This means that it always falls on a workday, a day when millions of registered voters have jobs to go to and classes to attend. There may not be time for voters to get to the polls because of such obligations. If we make election day a national holiday where the majority of businesses are closed and schools and universities are closed, this will make it very easy for all voters to have the time to vote. Instead of working moms and dads, rushing to vote early in the morning before work or late in the evening after work, marking the day as a federal holiday would allow an entire day to get the task done. This would break up the typical rush hours that we see on election days and help to eliminate the long lines that discourage voting. Moreover, as many polling places are often places of work, it would mean more polling places would be readily available for voters, increasing convenience. Election day should be a national holiday because it will enable more people to have the ability to vote, thus increasing voter turnout.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Election day should not be turned into a national holiday because it's not clear that doing so would be an effective solution to increase voter turnout. The argument for making election day a national holiday is that when voters have the entire day off, it will increase their turnout to the polls because they have the entire day to vote at their convenience. However, this argument does not seem to be entirely true. For instance, moving election day to the weekend has been something that many countries have adopted due to the same type of reasoning in regard to voter turnout. But in an analysis of voter turnout in other countries, it was determined that while countries with weekend voting do tend to have higher turnout than the US, adopting weekend voting hasn’t actually increased turnout within countries that have it. Looking at a country like Switzerland, despite weekend voting and the mailing of ballots to all citizens, it has the lowest voter turnout rate in the developed world at just 38.6%. Thus, the convenience to vote is not the problem. Increasing convenience and allowing people to have more time to vote will not be an effective solution to increase voter turnout. Even if registered voters have an entire day free from work or school, they still may choose not to show up at the polls.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] 'Too busy' is what non-voters report, and stated reasons are unreliable as measures of cause. It is the socially acceptable answer, and the same surveys find lack of interest and dislike of the candidates ranking alongside it. [Rejecting P2] A federal holiday closes government offices and some large employers. Retail, hospitality, healthcare, transport and much hourly work continue — often at higher volume on holidays — so the workers whose schedules constrain them most are the least likely to be freed. [Rejecting P3] The international evidence does not support the mechanism. Countries that moved voting to weekends did not see turnout rise as a result, and Switzerland combines weekend voting with universal postal ballots while recording one of the lowest turnouts among wealthy democracies. [Rejecting C] Better support is available than the premises supply. Early voting periods, automatic registration and postal ballots address the same constraint far more directly, while a holiday mainly benefits people who were already able to vote.